Ever want­ed to get some time away from it all � maybe just for a day, to ex­plore an­oth­er coun­try, then re­turn home with an ad­ven­ture to tell. Well Man­zanil­la, on Trinidad's east coast will cer­tain­ly be a new coun­try for many of us to ex­plore.

Man­zanil­la beach is 17 miles long, and bor­dered by co­conut and man­grove trees, is quite a dri­ve from the cap­i­tal city of Port of Spain - about 1 1/2 � 2 hours de­pend­ing on traf­fic and road con­di­tions. No check in re­quired, but please buck­le your seat­belt for this trip.

Trinidad's east­ern coast­line is rather wild, and de­vel­op­ment is slow com­ing to this side of the is­land. Al­though Man­zanil­la ap­pears to be a typ­i­cal, se­clud­ed Caribbean beach, noth­ing could be far­ther from the truth.

At any time of the day, you can ex­pect to see wa­ter buf­fa­lo, gi­ant egrets, seag­ulls and oth­er in­ter­est­ing wa­ter­fowl. If you ar­rive at the right time of the day, you can even see the riv­er flow­ing back­ward as the tide ris­es. Man­zanil­la is cer­tain­ly not your av­er­age or typ­i­cal beach.

This is a brown sand beach � the sand is a bit cours­er than your typ­i­cal pow­der white sand beach. The rag­ing blue wa­ters against the back­drop of brown/grey sand of­fers a unique­ly vi­su­al Caribbean beach ex­pe­ri­ence.

This is a per­fect beach for sun­bathing, and the near­by wet­lands cre­ate a breath­tak­ing view of na­ture all around you. The riv­er runs par­al­lel to the shore­line for a few miles cre­at­ing an eco-sys­tem that in­cor­po­rates the best of the land and the sea, iso­lat­ing is­lands of an­i­mals and plants that ra­di­ate their own beau­ty and bal­ance. You can have an ex­cur­sion in­to Trinidad's flo­ra and wildlife right from your car seat as the road runs right be­tween the ocean and the wet­land area.

The beach shore­line doesn't get much typ­i­cal beach traf­fic, and co­conuts, leaves and oth­er veg­e­ta­tion line the area � so you might want to put on some shoes if you plan on walk­ing on any part of this 17 mile beach.

Since this side of the is­land is less de­vel­oped � not many tourists come here, so you pret­ty much have the beach to your­self. There are life­guards on du­ty, a snack bar, pic­nic ta­bles and al­so chang­ing rooms, show­ers and toi­let fa­cil­i­ties � and al­so an ad­e­quate park­ing lot.